Oral Histories

Garry Beim

Interviewer:  The date is March 17^th, 2026. We’re here at the headquarters of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society and we’re interviewing Gary Beim and this is Bill Cohen, a volunteer interviewer. Gary, how far back can you trace some of your family?  Can you go back to your grandparents or great grandparents and tell us where they might be from?

Beim:  My grandfather came from Austria in 19…in 1880 approximately and as a young man and established himself in Columbus, Ohio, and I think he had a brother someplace else.  I don’t know because there are, I know of Beims in Minneapolis and Beims in New York, so, but I haven’t traced them back to anyplace.

Interviewer:  Beim. B-e-i-m.  Was that short for something?  Was the name changed at some point?

Beim:  No. That was, that’s what the name was.

Interviewer:  Wow.

Beim:  That’s all I never, I ever knew.

Interviewer:  Okay. Any other knowledge of grandparents or great grandparents?

Beim:  No.  Morris, as far back as Morris, Morris Beim and his wife Anna and they were both, somewhere along the line they got married and met each other in Columbus, Ohio in the 1900s  and got married.

Interviewer:  Well, tell us about him and her. What did, what did he do for a living?  What did she do?

Beim:  Morris, Morris Beim started in the insurance business and selling life and home and auto policies like anybody else does today and Anna was a homemaker, and they lived, as far as I knew, on South Ohio Avenue, and we, they had a child, they had actually, three, three children.  One, Albert Beim and he passed away.  I don’t know what year it was, but he was 12 years old, and then my father, Albert Beim, was born, I think, in 1922 and his sister, Yetta  Beim, which later became Grundstein was around that same time also, probably a little, a little bit before that.

Interviewer:  So, your grandfather started an insurance company.

Beim:  Right.

Interviewer: Then your father, did he also go into the family business?

Beim:  My father went into the family business in about 1949 when he got out of, when he got out of the Navy. By that time, Richard Grundstein had married my father’s sister, and he was in the business in 1947, and they were down at the Kresge Building at, at State and High Street and as best I know on family history, my grandfather was involved in, with Beth Jacob Synagogue.  He was involved with Ahavas Sholom Synagogue and they lived a happy life throughout Columbus.  He was a Charities Newsies. He was one of the beginning, one of the founding members of Charity Newsies in 1907 collecting money for kids.

Interviewer:  This is your grandfather?

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  He was one of the founding members.

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  And I thought, are there some stories about how it began or how he was involved with that?

Beim:  Well, the original was a group of men got together at, at the steakhouse at Broad and High and there were minstrels, some of them were minstrels and they saw a child trying to sell newspapers to get some money and I suppose as a lark, they went outside, grabbed his newspapers and they sold them all down the street and they gave the child money.  They came back in and they were, they were happy with what they did and they said, “You know, why don’t we do this as a group and we’ll get together and the Journal paper, publisher of one of the newspapers said, “I’ll print the paper and we’ll sell the newspaper.  We’ll go out throughout the city and we’re going to buy clothes for kids.  We’re going to buy coal for the houses and food for the winter season,” and best I can find out he was part of that original 15 members who went out at that time to sell newspapers and they raised at that time like $900 for that one day sale.

Interviewer:  Which back then was a lot of money.

Beim:  Which was an awful lot of money.  They had an awful lot of good times, and they opened a storeroom and they took care, they took turns caring for people and bringing people in.

Interviewer:  Now today, we know Charity Newsies, we know them for buying winter coats for children.  You’re telling us, originally, not only did they do that but they helped to buy coal…

Beim:  They bought coal at that time, cause furnaces to keep a house warm and the children with warm clothes learn and they have a good atmosphere at home when they’re warm and as a part of it which was carried forward was encourage them to do, to do better, to be stronger and get an education and with a nice warm coat and to this day the Charity Newsies still do that, not as many, well, we’re down from, they originally were 800 members.  It’s down to about 400 members now, but they still stand on the corners on the second Saturday of December and hawk newspapers.

Interviewer:  So, your grandfather, Morris Beim, he was one of the founding members.

 Beim:  Yes.  Yes.

Interviewer:  Wow. Fascinating.

Beim:  I’m not sure how far leading into it but with his office being down at State and High, and that was a good corner to be on for people traveling downtown because it’s down from Lazarus and the Fashion and the Union and the Statehouse.  That was a good place to, to hawk papers and get money.

 Interviewer:  So, your father, Albert…

Beim:  Right.

Interviewer:  Albert, Buddy Beim, he joined your grandfather’s insurance company

Beim:  Right.

Interviewer:  And since there was a Grundstein there who married a sister, this was really a family business.

Beim:  Absolutely and while it was, it was known as Beim Insurance, eventually, my father said, “We’ve been partners for a period of time, all of us, it should be Beim & Grundstein, give them equal billing, make my sister happy.”

Interviewer:  So, when did you come along?  What year was that?

Beim:  I came along in, I briefly started working in 1960, 1960/61 just being in the office during the summer doing, doing paperwork and filling files and for a little bit of time, learning about the business and I went, I graduated in 1963 from Bexley, and went to Ohio Northern University, and from Ohio Northern University in a business degree, I went into the business at that time.

Interviewer:  Now, that’s when you came along in the business.  When did you come along as, as a baby? When were you born?

Beim:  I was born in 1945.

Interviewer:  And at that point, your early childhood, where were you, where were you living?  Do you know?

Beim:  For a little bit of time we were in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  My grandfather had a business interest in a furniture store in Fort Wayne, or a supplier or a manufacturer, and they lived there for a little bit of time, but basically, from, when he got back from the War in ‘46/’47, we lived in Columbus.

Interviewer:  And where, what was your address then or what neighborhood?

Beim:  It was Ohio Avenue.  878 South Ohio was my grandfather’s address which was a block away from Ahavas Sholom and then they moved eventually, in the 50s down to Brookside Drive from the migration in about 1960…1955, fifty, maybe ‘53/’55 down to Brookside Drive which was Eastmoor.

Interviewer:  And that’s where your parents moved or…?

Beim:  Parents, parents moved.

Interviewer:  Parents moved, along with you…

Beim:  Along with me.

Interviewer:  …to Eastmoor.

 Beim:  Right.

Interviewer:  …and so your early, your early school years were in Eastmoor?

Beim:  Fairmoor School and then eventually we moved in 1954 or ‘55 to Bexley, on Fair Avenue, 2942 East Broad, 49, no,

Interviewer:  29?

Beim:  No, it’s gotta’ be, 2492.

Interviewer:  East Broad?

Beim:  No. Fair Avenue.

Interviewer:  Oh, Fair Avenue.

Beim:  Fair Avenue and the office, the office moved at that point from downtown at the Kresge Building to 2942 East Broad Street where Mr. Ruben had built a new, a new strip, a new little strip center at the Feedbag.  Feedbag was in, not the Feedbag, Toddle House.  Toddle House and Hess Delicatessen, Niagara, Niagara Furniture.  There was a hair salon, and we were at the end building, and we were there for 10 years.

Interviewer:  2942 East Broad?

Beim:  2942 East Broad Street which is Catering by Chani and the Torah Center now.

Interviewer:  Ok.  Now, so, your early years, you went to Fairmoor Elementary but then you came over to Bexley…

Beim:  Yes.

 Interviewer: So, let me ask you what was that like?  What, I’m always interested in how did the Jewish kids get along with the non-Jewish kids in elementary school?  What are your memories of that?

Beim:  I don’t remember many about the non-Jewish.  The Jewish people basically took a lot of care, care in playing with each other.   On Brookside Drive, it’s a small, somewhat small street.  Dick Stein and his band, who had a band moved on the first street.  Maury Portman was down on the, down that way also.

Interviewer:  Maury Portman lived in Eastmoor, you’re telling us.  He would later go on to be City Council President, and advisor to the mayor.

Beim:  I’m not sure if he was president.  He was the administrator for Mayor Sensenbrenner, and there was a Goldsmith that lived down next to us and then Beim and then Polster lived on the other side of us and there was a Nateman who lived across the street and behind Nateman was Alan Weiler’s house. On,

Interviewer:  Kellner.

Beim:  Kellner. Yes.

Interviewer:  I believe Bob Kellner still lives…

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  … uh, Bob Weiler,

Beim:  Alan Weiler…

Interviewer:  I think, still lives in that neighborhood.

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  Interesting.

Beim:  Alan Weiler, Bob Weiler was in that neighborhood and eventually Minken.  The Minken family lived in that neighborhood.  That’s a cousin, a relative of my wife’s and I didn’t know,  I didn’t know any idea what that was and that was Herbie Minken and Alvin Minken and Alvin Minken married a Cohen.

Interviewer:  So, were most of your friends in your elementary school years, were most of your, the kids you hung around with, mostly Jewish then?

Beim:  Yeah. Yes.  My mother’s sister moved to James Road and Fair Avenue and across the street from that was the Feinstein house was that neighborhood and the school was right behind there and you had to go down Brookside to Fair in order to cross, cross the street in order to go to the school, which is a dangerous intersection.  Still is a dangerous intersection.

Interviewer:  Did you go to Sunday School or synagogue?

Beim:  I went to Sunday School at, for a little bit at Tifereth Israel, more at Agudas Achim because we were in a, that was the neighborhood.  That was the place. When they moved from Washington and Donaldson Street, Agudas Achim, and Beth Jacob, Beth Jacob went to Buelen, Agudas Achim went to Bexley on Roosevelt and I was basically there.  I didn’t go to Sunday School at Beth Jacob. I went,  I think a year, or a couple to Tifereth Israel because Grundsteins, the Grundstein family with Yettta, with my Aunt Yetta and my mother’s sister were part of Tifereth Israel and matter of fact, my father was President of the Brotherhood, I think, in 1949 or ’48 at Tifereth Israel.

Interviewer:  Did you get, did you have a bar mitzvah?

Beim:  I had a bar mitzvah at Agudas Achim.

Interviewer:  What do you remember about that – the training, the learning Hebrew, all that mishigas?

 Beim:  Mr., uh, Solomon.  Mr. Solomon was my, Bernie Solomon was my teacher.  Originally, Mr. Harrison, the principal of the Hebrew School decided that Mr. Kass would be my teacher and my father went through the roof, went right through the roof because Mr. Solomon was the accountant for Handler and Sons, Compressed Steel, one of our customers in the office and he decided we were going to spend, we, if we’re going to spend money we’re going to spend it with our customers, so my father, when I came home and told, told him my teacher was Mr. Kass, he says, “Wait a minute,” and the next thing I know I’m in the car going back to the Hebrew School and my father had a discussion with Mr. Harrison about who my teacher was going to be and fifteen minutes later my new teacher was Mr. Solomon and he was a fine, fine, he was a really, you could, his voice was very, so smooth it was a, I want to say it was an America voice, not a European voice teaching because Mr. Kass had the “kh” on the end of it, on whatever you’re going on, and I couldn’t do that.

Interviewer:  Mr. Kass, you’re saying, sounded the European…

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  …and Solomon, your new guy, he was more American.

Beim:  Yes, he was.

Interviewer:  You liked that better.

Beim:  Yes, and he was, he was really, second, first or second row in front and Mr.,  he has, all his pupils, his students were sitting right next, around him at that time in the shul.

Interviewer:  Maybe I’m reaching too far, but would you say the fact that you liked the fact that Mr. Solomon had an American accent and voice, does that symbolize something about how at that point, American Jews wanted in general to assimilate?

Beim:  Yes, I think.  Mr. Solomon, I think, wanted to be your friend, your father, your educator, not necessarily your teacher to some extent.  He had a personal interest and a lot of the people that he had were friends of Handler, friends of Mr. Solomon, because where he lived, he lived on Remington and you went to his house to do lessons, or you went to the Jewish Center to go do lessons, and it was just, it was a warming feeling in being with him and him teaching you.

Interviewer:  Any other memories about your bar mitzvah?

 Beim:  There was a party at Ilonka’s. There was a party at, the Senaca, Seneca, I think, Seneca.

Interviewer:  The Seneca Hotel at Grant and Broad?

Beim:  Grant and Broad. uh,  I don’t think, we didn’t use the Fort Hayes. That was your other option and Dick Stein’s band was playing.  Herb Topy was the photographer.  Everybody used, no one, you had to use Herb Topy.  He was a fine gentleman.  He was all over the place. He was, he was really a good man.  That’s a name.  He got married to, his, Herb Topy’s wife passed away.  He married, the second wife, was Dave Beckman’s widow and Dave Beckman was Phil Beckman’s brother and when my father got in trouble down on South, on South Ohio Avenue, they automatically picked up Dave because they figured he was there also, and when Dave got in trouble, they picked up my father because they figured the two of them were together.  They had to be, they had, they had something going together, so, and it’s funny because Beckmans had a chicken place down on Central Market and they sold, they sold chickens. They killed chickens and Mr. Gellman, Cantor Gellman, was kosher, made kosher. He had a room in there.  He made kosher chickens.  He was the shaliach, [transciber note: shochket] he was the killer for the city in that, in that building.

Interviewer:  Now, wait a minute.  Mr. Gellman, who was the cantor…

Beim:  …at Agudas Achim.

Interviewer:  …at Agudas Achim,  was also, the, are you telling us he was also a kosher butcher?

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  He would actually cut the chickens.

Beim:  Absolutely.

Interviewer:  And his, so, one of those was a side job,

Beim:  Well, it was…

Interviewer: …the cantor being the cantor or being the chicken killer, one of the two.  It was a side job.

Beim:  In today’s market, I don’t know many cantors that make a lot of money.  They make money on bar mitzvahs.  They make money, used to make money on, he was a mohel also.  He was the community mohel, and whatever little side jobs around the areas, and probably did, watched the kitchen a little bit and when Mr. Hurwitz wasn’t at Agudas Achim kitchen, he was in there. He was everywhere.  He was, he had a beautiful voice.

Interviewer:  Now, I forgot to ask you, uh, your parents, where did they o to high school?

Beim:  My father?  This is, my father, this is unusual.  My father was at South High School.  My mother was at East High School.  East High School basically had Temple Israel and Tifereth Israel, and Agudas Achim and Beth Jacob went, in that neighborhood – that’s Ohio, Campion,  Livingston, Robinwood, Kelton Avenue, and all that, was with, was, Agudas Achim and Beth Jacob, when they moved, they moved the area, the bus came by and they took them downtown in that route.  They’re different sections of the city.

Interviewer:  Now, were you, now, you said, now, I’m a little confused here.  Were you saying that, that the South High kids generally went to one synagogue or two synagogues…

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer: And, the East High kids went to other…?

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  Now, outline this for us again.  The South High School kids were mostly…

Beim:  …Beth Jacob and Agudas Achim….

Interviewer:  Okay, which were the Orthodox.

Beim:  …and Ahavas Sholom…

Interviewer:  …the Orthodox.

Interviewer:  …Orthodox, and the East High  School kids…

Beim:  …were Tifereth Israel, ‘cause that was, Tifereth Israel’s just down two blocks Wilson Avenue, and Temple Israel was at Twentieth or Twenty-First and Bryden.

Interviewer:  And so, the East High School kids were either Conservative Jews or Reform Jews.

Beim:  Correct.

Interviewer:  I’ve never heard that.  Fascinating.

Beim:  Now I’m, I’m…

Interviewer:  Generalizing.

Beim:   I’m just generalizing.  I don’t, I don’t want any, someone to read this thing and say, “What? What?” but generally that was, that was the area and the congregation place, on the South, on the South end was Reed’s Restaurant which was at Champion and…

Interviewer:  …Livingston.

Beim:  …Livingston ‘cause that’s where the bus stop is. The bus stop, if they took a bus or they carpooled in, they would all scatter and they’d give a little shout out at…before going home.

Interviewer:  Now was there any competition or rivalry or, perhaps discrimination isn’t the right word, but, between the East High and the South High Jews?

Beim:  In the history that I have read, I didn’t feel it, okay, but I was told there was just, my father married, my father at South married my mother at East and my grandfather was not very happy about it, and because it wasn’t Jew…it wasn’t necessarily Jewish enough.  My Hebrew name was, is Gershon Leib and my mother named me after, my father was in the War overseas and, families didn’t get real together and my mother named me Gershon Leib after Gershon Yenkin and that was one of my father’s, my grandfather’s best friend was Gershon Lakin, uh, Yenkin from Yenkin Majestic Paint so, at that point, there was peace in the valley, because I became more Jewish because I had a Hebrew name to a, to a man that my grandfather loved and was with, so…

Interviewer:  But your mother was viewed as not Jewish enough in some way?

Beim:  Yes. Yes.

Interviewer:  Because she went to East and was more Reform?

Beim:  More Reform, because my grandfather,, my Grandfather Oppenheimer, was, lived on…he was the  kitchen man and the head usher at Temple Israel and those two, if you mention Temple Israel and Agudas Achim or Beth Jacob, that’s like fire and water. Today, Temple Israel and Agudas Achim or, or, or, they still don’t, there’s still a, in my opinion, there’s still an imaginary line although it’s crossed, it gets crossed a little bit more than normal.

Interviewer:  A tension, a tension between the two.

Beim:  You would understand it more than, a lot of people don’t understand it.  It’s there.

Interviewer:  Fascinating that you’re, the fact of your own family, of your mother and your father getting together, symbolized that, that tension.

Beim:   And my sister, my mother’s sister, had to go to Boston to find, find her husband and he was, he was in Tifereth Israel. So that’s why we were at Tifereth Israel for a period of time and then my father also joined Temple Israel for a period of time because he didn’t get along, he couldn’t get, because my mother needed more of a, more religious…Agudas Achim was too religious for my mother.

Interviewer:  For your mother.

Beim:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  So?

Beim:  There, there was a mixing, there was a mixing of I’ll make her, happy wife, happy life, and it was also good, it was also good for business.  It was also good for business.

Interviewer:  Explain.

Beim:  Well, like, my grandfather, Richard Grundstein was Tifereth Israel.  My father was Ahavas Sholom and Beth Jacob and eventually when Beth Jacob moved, moved to College, Bulen and then to College Avenue, that was too far away from Bexley and my parents went to, went to join Agudas Achim and that’s where I got bar mitzvahed  and my mother was part of Sisterhood there, the Sylvia Schecter gang and the, and the kitchen crew.

Interviewer:  And this thing though about, about how where you went to temple also had some links to business, I want to make sure I understand.  You’re saying that you already had links to the Orthodox side of things…

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  …but then by joining Temple Israel…

Beim:  We, we spread out a little bit.  Temple Israel was basically my mother’s, my mother’s not necessarily business.  They had their own, they had their own insurance agent over there to be influential, but it was, it’s nice to be seen.  It’s nice to be seen and to be a part of stuff like that.

Interviewer:  Now you went to Bexley High School.  You graduated in Sixty…

Beim:  Three.

Interviewer:  Tell us about that.  Was there any Jewish angle to that? For instance, were you active at all at the Jewish Center or in some of the Jewish groups like AZA or Pops Dworkin or anything else at all with a Jewish thrust?

Beim:  In high school I belonged to Epsilons.  I had to remember that, Epsilons.  I didn’t nearly forget about that.  Epsilon, there was BBYO, and there was a couple BB, B’nai B’rith…and we just, there was a group that at Bexley that said,  “I don’t want to belong to B’nai B’rith Youth.  Let’s, let’s, let’s start our own group,” and there was probably 30 people from Eastmoor and Bexley who decided we’d meet at the, we went to the Jewish Center, and they had, they gave us an advisor, and we formed our own group, Epsilons, and we and we went throughout.  There was other organizations through Louisville and other cities that had same and we had conventions to go to that place.  We wouldn’t go to BBYO.   None of us went to BBYO camps.  We just were among our own selves at the Excelsior Club even.

Interviewer:  Now Epsilon, there was a Jewish thrust to Epsilon?

Beim:  Yes.

Interviewer:  As there were for the other groups like BBYO.

Beim:  Yes. yes.

Interviewer:   Okay, and there was something called Pegasus?

Beim:  Yes.  You’re absolutely correct.  That was another one.  That was another group that was, Pegasus was, BBYO and then there was Pegasus and then there was Epsilon.

Interviewer:  And what kind of activities did Epsilon do?

Beim:  Well, it was a social.  We went to conventions.  We went to base…softball leagues basketball leagues.  Of course, we were all, all of us were in our own little group at Dorothy Bloom’s Dance, Dance Studio, Dorothy and, I forget his name – Ditzi [Naghi ?], or, had to learn how to dance at the Jewish Center, so, that was, that was part of that group over there on that.

Interviewer:  What kind of dances did you learn?

Beim:  Any, anything in, in the 60s, ‘cause mother wanted, mothers always wanted us to learn how to ballroom dance or jitterbug or all that stuff and she would teach us.  She was an example to us.  We were all still, at three, it was probably was in the group of 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, because those were the bar mitzvah years and we couldn’t just sit there, sit on a chair and go to a party for the kids.  You had to have some kind of dance thing.

Interviewer:  Did you learn the waltz and the box-step or the fox-trot?

Beim:  I’m still learning. I’m still learning and I’m very happy sitting in my own chair.

Interviewer:  Something I’m always interested in, is interfaith dating.  Was that a big issue in your family, who you could socialize with, Jews or not Jews?

Beim:  Ah,  I don’t think it was, I don’t think there was any, there was no hard rule on that because we had in high school and junior high, we had mixed friends.  There was nothing unusual about that.

Interviewer:  How did the Jews and non-Jews get along or not in high school?

Beim:  They’d get along, they’d get along in high school.   Hey, we got, it was funny.  We, in high school we had a guy named Sylvester Harrington.  He was a Black, a Black person.  His father was the caretaker and butler or man, man, waiting man for George Trautman and lived on Drexel.  He was President of the International Baseball League and he lived in the, with his parents in the carriage house in the back, which is still there, which is still there on that land.

Interviewer:  And this was a fellow student of yours…

Beim:  Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer:  At Bexley.

Beim:  Yeah, and we had someone that moved in from Israel, Myra Cohen.  I think it was Myra, Myra Cohen, was, she lived at Cassady, Maryland and Cassady and we had a, in high school we had two foreign exchange kids, came in, one from Sweden and I don’t remember where the other one came from, and funny, when we had our 50th class reunion, both girls, both people came from overseas to be at the class reunion.

Interviewer:  Wow.  So, after you graduated high school, actually before you graduated high school, you were working a little bit at your father’s and your grandfather’s insurance company.

Beim:  Absolutely.

Interviewer:  …learning the ropes.

Beim:  ’67, in 1967, came back and learned the ropes, went to Travelers Insurance School for six weeks in Hartford, Connecticut, for some reason.  I don’t know why I did that.  I graduated in June of ’67 and in January of ’68, I went to six-week insurance school in Hartford, Connecticut and that had to be the coldest winter ever on record in Hartford or anyplace on the East Coast, ‘cause the buses stopped running and that’s the only way we could get to class.  They had put us in a dormitory.

Interviewer:  The buses stopped running because it was too cold?

Beim:  It was too cold.  It was too cold.  They didn’t tell us about it before we were standing on the street waiting for the bus to come by.

Interviewer:  Now you talk about graduating. You were referring to your 1967 graduation at Ohio Northern.

Beim:  ’67 at Ohio Northern.  Yes.

Interviewer:  Did you live over there in Ada, Ohio, that small town or…?

Beim:  I lived, I got married in ’65 to Marsha Goldstein and we lived in, ’66, and we lived in Ada, Ohio for a year and a half.

Interviewer:  Ada, Ohio, is not a very Jewish place.

Beim:  No, it…

Interviewer:  What was that like?

Beim:  Well, I got into school in, sixty…actually, ’63, ’64.  I had to have someplace to go and my father, and Irv Stein, may he rest in peace, at Roy’s Jewelers, knew a man, who, Carlton Dargusch, who was some kind of man over at Ohio Northern and he got me in to summer school, and all I had to do was get a C average in order to get into the Fall and I took history and I took English and I got, I won it with a B and a D, which got me into, got me in to Ohio Northern, and I found out later that Ohio Northern had, at that time, limits.  They wanted Jewish, they didn’t, they wanted, they had to have Jewish students in there and they, there was, it was a numbers game.  In small schools all across, they needed to have a mix of population of Blacks, Jews, whatever you want to have, and their limit was 10 or 12 or 15 per year, and I made the grade to get in there, and that, matter-of-fact, they had a Jewish fraternity.  AEPi was there.  AEPi was the eighth, that was Lodge Number Eight, for AEPi and I joined and there was a lot of awful, Ohio Northern is, and if anybody took it apart, it’s, 40% of those people there are from the East Coast. Its other claim to fame was that Getty, George Getty, Jr. went there in early 1900’s and he was thrown out.

Interviewer:  The oil businessman…

Beim: son was at Ohio Northern.  He was a screw-up and they threw him out.

Interviewer:  Now, something you just said fascinates me. In the 30s, 40s, and maybe in the 50s, as I remember history, a lot of colleges and universities had limits, what were viewed as unfair limits on the number of Jews who could come.

Beim:  That could be.

Interviewer:  You’re telling me that at Ohio Northern at least, they were, they had to take initiatives to bring in some Jewish students.

Beim:  Yes.  They, they…

Interviewer:  …and you were part of that.

Beim:  I was part of it but the Jewish people in the East Coast, that wanted to find, wanted a higher education and couldn’t get in to East Coast schools, looked for someplace in order, to, and these are basically Jewish people, looking, they couldn’t get in.  Ohio Northern has a law school, a pharmacy school, an engineering school, there’s another one in there, on there, and they could come into Ohio Northern, graduate in one of those places, go back to East Coast, “What degree,..?” and on your job application.  “Are you an attorney?” “Yes, I’m an attorney.  I went to Ohio Northern University.  I passed the Bar, the Ohio Bar,” and which passes over to New York, or pharmacy school which passes over, could be a pharmacist and at that time,  DO’s, medical schools, were looking for pharmacists to go into DO practice, and they would go, Des Moines, Des Moines had a school.  I think Kansas City had a school to become a doctor.  You had to go, you had to go three more years in order to become a doctor of, MDO and graduate, so you didn’t have to go through medical school, all the things that through Ohio State or any place else.  You’ve got your degree or you became an attorney or went to engineering school.. They had a big engineering school there and…

Interviewer:  So, Ohio Northern was open to Jews.

 Beim:  Absolutely. They, they, they migrated to them.  I’m not going to say they overloaded with them.  They had, there sometimes were limits on them but, and that’s why there was a Jewish, Jewish fraternity there also, and Ohio State was a sister school to Ohio Northern on that.

Interviewer:  Now tell us about that, your wife.  Where did you meet your wife?

Beim:  Well, my first wife, Marsha Goldstein, I met when she was in high school and then we got married and then, things didn’t work out later on, and 40 years ago,  I married Elaine, Lainey Cooperstein.  We met at a Jewish singles Friday night service at Agudas Achim and we were going after to get a drink or something like that after, everybody, they were supposed to go to the Playboy Club for a drink and they didn’t go there.  I went there.  They didn’t go there. They went over to the Kahiki, so I was high and dry.

Interviewer:  By yourself.

Beim:  By myself, and I called her the next day and we hit it off.  We went out for a drink or dinner and eventually got married.

Interviewer:  And that marriage lasted a long time.

Beim:  For 40 years.

Interviewer:  Forty years.

Beim:  And I got engaged in, I got engaged in, I’m not sure which year.  I’ll have to think which year it is.  Forty years, forty years goes back to 1986, okay, and in ’86 I was, I had my two sons.  One went to Europe after he graduated and the other one, went to, no they didn’t graduate, he went on a trip. Let me get myself, let me get my…I took one son as a chaperone to Israel and two years later I took the other son to Israel as a chaperone also, and at that time I was dating Lainey and as I was going to go to Israel as a chaperone.  She wanted to go, ‘cause that was Alan Ciner took the kids and she said, Jay Perler was the president of the synagogue, says, “You two can’t go to Israel.  It doesn’t look right.  you two…”

Interviewer:  Because…

Beim:  Lainey and I were going to together…

Interviewer:  but you weren’t married.

Beim:  We weren’t married. I got divorced the year before that time and you can’t, Jay says, “ You can’t.  It doesn’t look right,”  and I remember, I remember we went, that was the year we went to the Israeli, Mac…Fifth Avenue Parade in New York and Lainey went to that.  She chaperoned the girls.  I chaperoned the boys with Alan Ciner and this was in, like, May, and we were going to go on this trip in June, and my, Lainey threw absolutely a fit because Jay was her cousin and he wasn’t going to allow her to go on the trip to Israel…

Interviewer:  with you.

Beim: …with me, and so she threw a fit, not only at Jay, but then she went to the higher authority, Rabbi Ciner.

Interviewer:  And the rabbi said…

Beim:  The rabbi said, “I’m not fighting a woman.  As far as I’m concerned, you can go,” and he gave per…he gave his blessing on it.  I roomed with Alan Ciner, to make sure there was no hanky-panky going on in Israel, and she chaperoned with the girls and then I gave her a ring at The Wall on the Friday night to get engaged.

Interviewer:  Wow.

Beim:  And then we got married in October.

Interviewer:  Now, what did she do?  Did she have a job outside the home?

Beim:  She was, what’s a, it’s a cytologist.  A cytologist [transcriber note: also known as: cytotechnologist or cytopathologist] looks at cells, blood cells for ladies for cancer, to see the pap smears, and she worked for LabCorp.

Interviewer:  Did you say she was a psychologist?

Beim:  Cytologist.  C-y-t-o-l-o-g-i-s-t…

Interviewer:  Cytologist. Ah.

Beim:  …and…

Interviewer:  Very technical.

Beim:  Very, very technical and she worked in LabCorp up in Dublin and when we got engaged,  at that time, and we, she moved in, in to my house on Sherwood, and so we cohabitated with each other.

Interviewer:  And so, she kept up that work for many years…

Beim:  Absolutely.

Interviewer:  …while you were in the insurance business?

Beim:  …insurance business.  Right, and she’d get up in the morning.  She went, she drove all the way out to Dublin, and she got up at 5:30 in order to go, to  leave by 6, in order to miss the traffic going all the way out to Dublin and then at three, three o’clock, she’d be through at work and she’d come back.  The traffic, the traffic coming back was, was, she could put the pedal to the metal and she was home by 3:30.

Interviewer:   So, tell us something about your life, in the last few decades.  What have you been active in?

Beim:  Well, in, since I had nothing better to do, in 1970, a group of us got together, well, before that, I was with, I was with the Minyaner Program at Agudas Achim with the Brotherhood.  I had raised my two boys to be part of the Minyaner Program,  and then my girls, my granddaughters were born,  and I wanted them to be part of the Minyaner Program and then I gravitated to Nate Nedelman’s kitchen, for the Minyaner Program making breakfast at Agudas Achim.  I eventually took over for Nate when he retired to Brotherhood dinners, and involved with Brotherhood, became President of the Brotherhood, and then, at, at some point along the way, Kenny Garver who did those dinners, got sick and they needed someone stupid enough to try to do those dinners, Boys Night Out dinner, for, it still is on its 50th year, and I must have got an itch someplace along the line and I said, “My crew can do that,”  so, for 25 years I did the Brotherhood dinner for Boys Night Out.

Interviewer:  That’s the, that’s the annual event where sometimes they’ll have a comic or a comedian come in and a full dinner…

Beim:   …and then maybe they, they honored, they honored somebody.  They get an honoree someplace along the line also, which I was, I was part of that also, which for one year took me out of the kitchen, but before that, and eventually  I, they retired me and then during also,  I became, Meyer Hoffman got me into the Charity Newsies along with Al Wing.  That was in 1976.

Interviewer:  So, you were carrying along your grandfather’s…

Beim:  …grandfather’s and…

Interviewer:   …tradition of being active in Charity Newsies.

Beim: …and somehow or another, Al Wing talked me into writing the Seventy-Five Year History of the Charity Newsies book, and seeing that I got all D’s and C’s in English in high school and college, put me right up there, so, I wrote, I wrote the Charity Newsies book with Sandy Schwartz.  Sandy Schwartz who from the Sports Editor of the Citizen Journal who went, a caveat, he went, he moved to Phoenix ‘cause his wife got a better job in Phoenix or Tucson in her writing, and he went there and got Leisure and Arts Editor for the newspaper there, and they got, eventually he became the Editor for the newspaper there by chance and then moved to Austin to do a paper in Austin, and then moved to Atlanta, Georgia – this is the Sports Editor – it’s Abe Schwartz’s son – Abe and [Renia?]  Schwartz, the glass-man.  Abe and [Renia? ] Schwartz moved to Atlanta and they have a car magazine that Cox manufacturing, that Cox Publishing does and he was the CEO of Cox [Automotive], so, I’m still trying to get ahold of him by the way.  He just retired.  He’s 75, 76 years old.  He just retired from CEO of that, of that magazine.  He made it into one heck of a magazine.

Interviewer:  You have so many links with so many other prominent and active Jews in the community in addition to being one yourself.  Let me ask you about something else.  There was another group, Maccabee?  The Maccabee Lodge? Tell us about that.

Beim:  Maccabee Lodge.  Zion Lodge B’nai B’rith, was a B’nai B’rith organi…lodge of our fathers and as the young, as the youngsters, we didn’t want to belong to Zion Lodge because they had six or seven hundred members, whatever that number members, and they were old and stodgy as, in our, in our view, so we got…

Interviewer:  And this was kind of a fraternal group, kind of like the Moose and the Elks and the…

Beim:  Somebody said, “Why,” “B’nai B’rith, say why don’t you guys form a second lodge, so we formed a second lodge, and it was in Nineteen, uh, I want to say, 75 and Sanford Levy was the first President.  I was Membership Chair, which I, which I had no problem with. The First Vice-President was in charge of fundraising, and I, I definitely didn’t want to be that part, that part, but we went around.  The dues was $25 a year and since I knew a lot of people and I was mobile, I went to see people and I said, “Give me five dollars.”  He says, “Give me five dollars. Give me five dollars.” He says, “What’s that for?”  “Just give me five dollars,” and he’d give me five dollars.  I said,” You just joined Maccabee Lodge Bnai Brith, and they’re gonna’ get a bill, you’re gonna’ get a bill for $20 more, and now you’re part of that Lodge, the New Lodge.” And so, we, we had, we had monthly dinners.  I think it was monthly.  I like to believe it was monthly dinners, at Plaza Properties.  Larry Ruben gave us, gave us the use of one of the party houses and we had our dinners and meetings there and we had different people coming in there and we had a new perspective, on it.  While Zion Lodge had their major was Children’s Home Day at the Ohio State Fair which is a fantastic affair.  Richard Grundstein was in charge of that many years and they would bring kids on a Monday, the first Monday after the Fair opened and they’d bring busloads of kids from all over the State of Ohio into the fairgrounds and they would give them money, ride tickets.  They’d buy them lunch at Wendy’s, ‘cause Wendy’s gave them certificates for lunch and they just chaperoned the  kids throughout the whole thing and I was part of that with  Richard ‘cause how he organized all these buses coming through and, and you’re talking maybe 5000 kids coming in on that one day, organizing and coming in, but Maccabee Lodge started a little bit smaller, a little bit smaller.  We wanted to be more of a “Look, let’s go to the Institute on West Broad Street,” and we’d have a party up for the kids in the Asylum area.

Interviewer:  Oh, the Asylum was for the mentally ill, or the…

Beim:   Yes.

Interviewer:  …the developmentally disabled, one of those two.

Beim:  Yes, and we would go to Children’s Hospital and dress up in clown outfits and go to Children’s Hospital, and then eventually we went to a, we went to a convention, a get-together in Springfield, Ohio, and they had, at one of the Lodges there had done coffee and cake for police officers on Christmas Eve, and I said, “Eh, you know something?  We can do better than that.  Let’s feed the police, Bexley, Whitehall and Reynoldsburg.  Let’s take food trays in to the police station.  Let’s be a part of the night, the day and the night at those police stations.  Let’s ride around with police officers.  Let’s feed the police.”

Interviewer:  Because they had to work on Christmas or Christmas Eve?

Beim:  Every Christmas.  When White Castle closes, there’s no  place to get coffee.  There’s noth…there’s no 7-Eleven, nothing is open, except, “Let’s, let’s, let’s do this.”  And so we got together and we, I have a picture. She’s got a picture and, we went out and we bought, I had a person I insured, had an Italian pizza, a pizza restaurant on Michigan Avenue in Victorian Village and I said, “He’ll give me the store, he’ll give me, he’ll give me his slicer and his room,” so we took down turkey and salami and cheese and roast beef and we made deli trays, huge deli trays for Bexley, Whitehall and Reynoldsburg.

Interviewer:  For the police.

Beim:  For the police, and we went down there and we sat down, sat around and we got to ride in the police cars because we signed the waivers for that night.  We were the buddies and then we looked around at the first time around and said, Columbus police cars were in Bexley.  Bexley invited Columbus, the East Side, “Why don’t you come in?  We got food here from B’nai B’rith.  Why don’t you come on in?”  and we looked at, there were, must have been six, seven cars from Columbus that came into Bexley, and they were all having a good time, and we looked at each other and we said, “You know something?  We can expand this a little bit.”  So, the next year we went to, there was a Buick dealership on Morse Road.  We put a food tray there, and we put a food tray at Alro Auto Parts on the West Side, and we went to, I think, we went to Gahanna, ‘cause Jews were living in Gahanna, and we put food trays, and we went to the Highway Patrol at the Fairgrounds.  We had like ten, nine or ten different places, and we said, “ We can take this out. Why don’t we do Central Ohio, from this little, we can do it.”  I think we did, when I retired from it, I think we did 40 trays.  We went as far as Obetz, West Jefferson, Grove City, Newark, Lancaster, Gahanna, Johnstown, Whitehall, Bexley, Reynoldsburg, Upper Arlington, Grandview, Westerville, Worthington, Hilliard.  Grandview had a fire station.  We put them, put the, at the fire station there.

Interviewer:  And this was all done by the Maccabee Lodge?

Beim:  Maccabee Lodge.

Interviewer: …which was the younger, the younger guys’ Lodge.

Beim:  …the younger group, and then eventually the two Lodges merged, but we also, they wound up, they were dying.  We just made them a part of our group.  They didn’t have any, there wasn’t anybody there that much doing that, doing it, and Children’s Home Day needed our help also.  We helped with Children’s Home Day so it was, it eventually wound up, the Fair wound up not having Children’s Home Day or somebody else took it over, or, or it had to stop.  It had to stop someplace along the way.  It had to have a nice death.

Interviewer:  But it came full circle because at the beginning, you young guys looked at the old guys’ Lodge and said “Oh, they’re too stodgy.  Let’s start our own,”  and then years later, decades later you got back together.

Beim:  Well, at the time when I, got sick when I was in, at some point in ’59 and somebody else took it over for me.  I became Charity Newsie President and I became Agudas Achim dinner and all that.  It was time, it was time to stop, but it got to the point where I had to take a rest, and the amount, the policemen’s dinner had gotten to the point where, in my memory, we did a 150 pounds of roast beef.  We did a hundred pounds of turkey, sliced turkey.  We did 60 pounds of salami. We did 60 pounds of provolone cheese.  We had, Kroger gave us the bread for the place.  Mike Calliff at Calliff  Produce had his own little business for, at that time there were salad bars and so he started his own business making salad, stuff.  He would cut carrots and potatoes and make all that kind of stuff.  He did, he did our produce.  We had, we had that and then we went to, we went to the bakeries around.  There was a bakery at, at Bexley and we were, and I went there and I said, “Listen, at three o’clock in the afternoon, what are you going to do with your leftovers?”  He says, “Ehhhh.”  he says. “I want ‘em,”  I said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars.  I want all your leftovers.”  He says, “Come pick ‘em up,” he says, and so, I sent somebody in there and we picked up boxes and cakes and he makes, he made extras for us anyway.  Doughnuts that we passed around the police departments on it, and it was a great, it was a great event and we did, it’s, now, Barry Eaton took it over after me, after I did and eventually I think it died, it died a nice-full death because there are places open on New Year’s Eve, on Christmas Eve now.

 Interviewer:  Before I forget, you wrote the history, a book, about the history of the Charity Newsies and as you’ve talked about the Charity Newsies, you, you have mentioned several Jewish people.  It sounds like Jews were a pretty disproportionately high percentage of people active in the Charity Newsies.

Beim:  Uh, there have been three Jewish presidents of the Newsies.  One was Charlie Margulis, and he was, I think, in 1947 or ’48 and I think, and I won’t swear to this, because of the War, there was a little bit of problems because a lot of the Jew…people who belonged to the Charity Newsies were Maennerchor people, down, the German Village Maennechor down there..

Interviewer:  …which was the German Society.

Beim:  …German Society and I think that they wanted to make peace, some peace with the Jews in there and he stood forward, he was Tifereth Israel, he was, he was one of those people that “I don’t care what nationality you are.  I’m taking care of kids. I’m going to be with this.  I’m going to be with this, them.”   The second one was Bill, uh, the radio announcer, uh, not Bill Cotter, not, who, the voice of the Buckeyes.  You asked me too quick.  [transcriber note: Bert Charles].

Interviewer:  He was with WVKO Radio.

Beim:  Correct, and he married a non-Jewish person.  He moved to Upper Arlington.  He was, but he was Jewish.

Interviewer:  And he was active with Charity Newsies.

 Beim:  Charity Newsies. And I was the next one after that and I wrote, when Al Wing had me write the book, The Charity Newsies,  I decided that, hey,  I want to be pres…I want to be, at that time, I did probably four to five hundred home visits. ‘cause at that time when we gave clothes out, when the Newsies gave clothes out, you had to go to the kids at their home and you had to interview them and I probably did five hundred a year in home visits of the, oh, we probably had 6000 applicants and I said, you know something?  I want to be president and I ran seven times. The eighth time, I won. I ran seven times and I lost.

 Interviewer:  You were very persevering.

 Beim:  Correct, and I was, I was friendly with a lot of people there, but againthere’s a wall there, and the, I remember in the meetings, ‘cause  I, eventually I took care of doing the food concession down at the Newsies and there was a guy named Jerry Grady, and Jerry Grady came up to me and said, put his arms around me – he’s a big six-five, 300-pound man, he’s scary, “Next year’s your year.  I’ll make sure you do it.   You just stay right with you’re doing.  I’ll make sure you’re there,” and he was with, he was big with the Knights of Columbus.

Interviewer:  Catholic group.

Beim:  Catholic group. Mickey McFadden was the store manager, and he was with the Masons.  He was not Catholic.  He was brought…and Ed Brinkman was Brinkman Concessions at the Fairgrounds, and John McFarlane, and “You’re gonna be President next year. Just keep your, keep your nose clean.”

Interviewer:  And it did happen.

Beim:  It did happen. It did happen and right now there’s another person in line, possibly to become the fourth and that’s Bobby Derrow’s son, is on the Board.  Alan Rosen was on the Board also and he did a lot of stuff for, for the Newsies but, things didn’t work out for him.

Interviewer:  I haven’t asked you yet.  In your life, have you, yourself, experienced anti-Semitism?

Beim:  No.  No, because the group that, the people I, in the Newsies or the place, I aligned myself with a group of people that if they’re going to knock Jews, they’re going to knock the wrong, there’s another sect there they don’t want to screw with.  When I joined, Meyer Mellman, Meyer Hoffman was Columbus Drum, a big, Hoffman container  company, B. B. Kaplan, Lou Berliner, with who Berliner Park down, and B. B. Kaplan was the Good Ship Hope, and…

Interviewer:  …physician.

Beim:  …physician.  He was, he was a big man in that, in that area and there were other.  In the, in the book I wrote, the Silbersteins were big donors to Charity Newsies.  There were, my grandfather, but they, these people were out, when we were out on the corners, they were in front of Lazarus, we were in front of, of Morehouse Fashion, and that was Gundersheimer.  Levy was the Union down on, and all of them were proportionately, a lot of those people, their family members were Charity Newsies.  When I was in my going up, when I made the film of the Charity Newsies, Cubby Wolfe was, you didn’t see Cubby.  You saw Cubby twice, once at headquarters for Drive Day and once when you’re, when you’re sitting in on a promotion meeting, and whatever he said he was speaking for the Wolfe Family.  He was speaking for the Wolfe Family.

Interviewer:  And it helped Charity Newsies.

Beim:  Oh, that’s who printed the newspaper. The Citizen Journal gave us the original, but when it went out of business, the Wolfe Family took it over and it was, it was good for business, good community-wise to show.  I’m sure there was some, I’m sure I rubbed somebody the wrong way, and I really didn’t care.  Sometimes the Newsies would have their meetings down, special meetings down at the Maennechor.  I always called it the “Maennopause” and they would sum up, they’d start their German drinking songs and out and then go, whatever.  That was part of it, and, but…

Interviewer:  …but whether it was the Charity Newsies or other parts of your life, you don’t recall facing any anti-Semitism.

Beim:  Not really.  Not really.

Interviewer:  In business…

Beim:  I tried to be friendly with everybody.  My father was friendly with, my grandfather was friendly with everybody, and it’s, ya gotta’ be friends. Be friendly, if you be friendly enough, they’re going to be friendly to you eventually, and that’s, and that’s in my going around and seeing people,  I only, one time only had one person say, “You’re Jewish?”

Interviewer:  Only one time did that happen.

Beim:  Only one time that ever happened.  “You’re Jewish?”  And she was, I happened to be the west, she lived on the West Side.  Believe it or not, today I, and I’m going back, 50 years, 50 years ago, DeNoto was her name and her sister, she had a sister and I, [Climdan?]  DeNoto.

Interviewer:  You remember the name?

Beim:  I remember the name. I remember the name.

Interviewer:  It made an impression on you.

Beim:  I had her for years in insurance.  I had her insurance.

Interviewer:  She was a customer.

Beim:  She was a customer.

Interviewer:  I see that there’s something here in some notes that you had an interesting memory of the Schottenstein Department Stores, North and South, and you had, the memory involves the fact that the workers, the Jewish workers would pray. Talk about that.

Beim:  Let me tell you. Everybody, everybody has a relationship with Schottenstein’s.  No question about it.  It’s, the first story I ever heard, was, the Schottenstein’s, when, I’m not so sure about the South but I do know at the North Store, when it was 3:30, they had enough Jewish people in that store that they did mincha.  They did the mincha service at 3:30.  They would all take their break at 3:30 and they would do mincha services, and if they had to do maariv, they couldn’t do maariv that early but they’d do maariv later on, and Saul Schottenstein promoted it and, and he, he was a fine person over there with that and I’ll tell you a story about Saul Schottenstein on this.  The Charity Newsies always had a great relationship with the Schottensteins, and we were short pants one year.  We ran, we were running out.  We had more kids than we wanted to and my, my buddy, Mickey McFadden comes over, says, “Garry, come’ere. C’mon. Get on the phone.”  He called Saul Schottenstein over at the store.  “Saul. I’m short pants.”  “How many can you use?”  “I need a hundred dozen.”   “Can you pick ‘em up tomorrow?”  “Can pick ‘em up tomorrow.”  To this day, we’re still waiting for a bill.  We didn’t get billed. A hundred dozen pairs of pants, various sizes…

Interviewer:  …donated.

Beim:  …donated just by, on a phone call to Saul Schottenstein.

Interviewer:  And it went to Charity Newsies.

Beim:  It went to Charity Newsies.  It’s amazing.   It’s, it’s, now, there’s probably a million stories about Schottensteins, the Jewish ladies, the Jewish ladies, I don’t know, Jewish ladies going down there on Friday at two o’clock on Friday,  to see what’s brought out on the stores for Sunday.

Interviewer:  Oh, they wanted to get a preview?

Beim:  Preview?  They were buying.

Interviewer:  Oh, they bought early.

Beim:  They bought early.

Interviewer:  They were the early-bird-buyers.

Beim:  He was, Saul was such…, they’re so many, and it goes to Jay also.  When Saul Schottenstein was in Heritage House, for a good many years.  He was at Denison.  He had health problems.  He was at Denison which is down, the Old Doctors North, and then he went to Heritage House and he had the double suite up on the second floor, across from my mother-in-law, who was there also.  He had the double suite and he needed dialysis.  He needed to be alive and well, and I think Jay put in a dialysis unit in the Heritage House, so his uncle could have dialysis.  And that’s, anybody else could use it also, but, he had that unit in there, and he would, this is, I know it’s a sideline, but Saul used to come down for Rabbi Kozberg’s service at, that he gave at the synagogue at the new Heritage House, and it was, my parents came in there, went to services there.  My in-laws were there, and we came in there because the grandkids would come in there and they’d dance up there in the studio, on the, it was an hour service and it was nice to go down there and he had a service and then, occasionally, every time, Saul Schottenstein, we went to, and Sonia was there, we went, they went for lunch.  Remind me to tell you about the lunch crowd.  They went to lunch down at the Clarmont, and Saul and, went down, it was a big round table at, at the Clarmont at 12:30 and there was probably ten, eleven people down there. One time, there was a lady that was down there, this was with, with Saul, and we said to her, “ You want to go with us?”  “Yeah,”  and so down to Clarmont, and had lunch and I said,” Where’m I gonna’ drop, where do you want me to drop you off?”  She says, “Just drop me off right at the front door,” and we dropped the lady off at the front door and she sat next to Saul at the table and the security person at the Heritage House comes out, “Where have you been, Mildred?”  She was a resident. She just became part of the group.

 Interviewer:  She was a resident who…

Beim:  …became part of the  group.  We took her to lunch. We took her to lunch.  Security couldn’t find her for two hours. They couldn’t find her for two hours.  They checked the entire place for two hours looking for Mildred.  “Where, where, where did, she?  She lost? She could’a wandered out.”

Interviewer:  Oh, wow, that’s a story.  Now, you have another story or memory about one of the Lazarus women who…

Beim:  Oh.

Interviewer:  …had returned merchandise and what she did with that.  Tell us about that.

Beim:  My, my first wife, Marsha Goldstein, was Judge Harry Goldstein and Mildred Goldstein,  and the Jewish ladies had, I think it was Twig Twenty-One, and that’s the one, the Twigs, which I don’t know if they’re still in, in around now.  Ladies in different parts of the city would have fundraising events for Children’s Hospital and hers was Twig Twenty-One and Mrs. Lazarus was part of that group, and Mrs. Lazarus told Mr. Lazarus that anything back in the back that is the returned, or going thrown out were to be put into a refrigerator box.

Interviewer:  A huge box.

Beim:  Huge box, refrigerator box, at the time, bring, take the refrigerator box over to on Fourth Street where the Twig Twenty-One, or all the Twigs would have their sale.  Each one had their sale. Take it up to the second floor and the ladies from Twig Twenty-One would come in a couple days in advance and they would sort out the merchandise…

Interviewer:  …from the huge box.

 Beim:  …from the huge boxes and they had, when I tell you that, Mrs. Lazarus was there.  There were a lot of workers in there going through that and giving money for Twig Twenty-One and then she was part of that group, part of that group for Twig Twenty-One.

Interviewer:  You have, you have rubbed shoulders and been friends with so many active Jews…

Beim:  I want to tell you…

Interviewer:  …in the community.  You are one yourself.

Beim:   I want to tell you.  My father, my father, interesting story about my father.  This is, this is good.  This is hard to believe, but at 11:15, when I’m in business, at 11:15, I knew where my father was.

Interviewer:  11:15 at night?

Beim:  Day.

Interviewer:  At day, in the morning.

Beim:  11:15 in the morning, he was at Dave and Phil Beckman’s chicken place in Central Market, in Central Market, picking up Dave to go to lunch. Phil would stay there and watch over the place, whatever, he’s going to do that.  Dave had some serious health problems, and we’ll worry about Dave’s health problems later on, but eventually that whole area, the bus station took that whole area out, the Central Market.  I have a picture of the Central Market, painting of the Central Market, and then Phil and Nate Katz, Phil Beckman and Nate Katz went into business  into the furniture business on Long Street along with Custom Plastic Covers and every, 11:15,  my father was at K-Beck to pick up Phil to go have lunch, every, Monday through Saturday.

Interviewer:  They always went to lunch at 11:15.

Beim:  11:15, 11:30 they went to lunch, okay, and they would go, they would go to new restaurants in the city or, give blessings on, or the same one.  The big, the most common one was the Clarmont, Max’s Steak House on Spring Street, the Jai Lai, Jack Bauman’s on Grandview Avenue, the Sheraton downtown at lunch and they had, they had a group with a card.  They had, they had cards made up for the group and you had to have the card to be part of the group, and if you, if someone asked the group, at the group, for the cards, if you didn’t have the card, you picked up lunch.  You bought lunch.  Now you’d say, ‘Well, a couple people for lunch.”  Ha.  The group from 11:30 to a quarter to twelve, when the group broke up, had somewhere close to 16 to 18 people who came to the restaurant to have lunch.  That table back there, there was, the huge, tables were all around, 16 to 18 people sitting down to have lunch and we’re talking, for instance, Gil Siegel, Columbus Window Cleaning, Sid Herman, with a builder Washington Square, Marvin Katz, K-Beck, was down there.  I forget his wife’s name.  I can’t…anyway.  Herman Eisenman, he was a Seagram’s salesman. He had, started a deli in the North Market.  There was a conglomerate.  When I say, Larry, Larry Shell was at the cash register.  He left his dental practice to run the cash register for his father down at Max’s Steakhouse, but this whole group back in the bar, by the coat, someone wanted a table. Uhn-un.  Larry Berman was there. Sometimes Maury Portman came over, because he normally would go to Tommy’s Diner on West Broad Street, but this whole group for lunch, was amazing.  It just, it was just, to see it, and then someone, Larry Berman once, someone called for the card.  Larry Berman didn’t have the card with him.  Larry Berman went to the, called Kenny Kauffman.  “Send a cab to my house.”  “Huh?”  “ Send a cab to my, on Haddon.  My wife will give him the card.  I need the card back down here within the half- hour…

Interviewer:  …so I don’t have to pay the bill for everybody…

Beim:  …so I don’t have to pay the bill.”

Interviewer:  So, you’re reminding us about the camaraderie among Jewish businessmen in Columbus.

Beim:  Yes.  It was a wonderful. It was really great. If you didn’t eat breakfast at the Continental.  Anybody tell you about the Continental?  It was a restaurant, there was a Jewish restaurant, the Continental at the alley at Spring and High Street.  It had a lot of …if you wanted a corned beef sandwich, you’d go to the Continental, but men gravitated to that.  There were a couple non-Jews there too probably, but it was, it was just a wonderful time talking about business, it’s second only, my father, my grandfather used to, Morris Beim used to, used to go at 9:30, ten o’clock.  He walked down to Paine-Weber at the Huntington Bank Building on the mezzanine floor.  That’s where Paine-Weber had the stock exchange and the old-timers would sit there in a smoke-filled room watching the ticker-tape going across.  It was a great atmosphere.  It was a great atmosphere at that time. Dave Schwartz…

 Interviewer:  And the time you’re talking about,

Beim:  …Dave Schwartz used to come to that group.  Dave Schwartz from the Schwartz Bakery used to come down also.

Interviewer:  And the era you’re talking about is when, the 50s, 60s, 70s?

Beim:  I’m talking 60s and 70s, maybe into the 80s.  By the 80s the group had tethered down by one way or another and they were, Max’s had closed probably and they went to the Sheraton, and they went to the Jai Lai, and they would call Beckman, find out, “Where are we going?” or  Buddy, where are we going?  Where are they meeting?” They’d eventually get there.

Interviewer:  As you look back on your life, what role would you say your Jewish upbringing or your Jewish roots, what role has that played, if anything?  How do you view it?

Beim:  Jews take care of Jews and we’re available for the non-Jews also, if you want to become part of our group.  We may not become part of your group, but you may become, you may be welcomed into our group, and ‘cause no one was ever turned away.  My father never turned anybody away out of the office.  We had a man who had a janitorial company.  He took, he had a desk in my father’s office, nothing to do with him.  He didn’t sell insurance.  He ran his janitorial business out of my office and he and we gave him a check every month, or every week or every month ‘cause he cleaned the office.  He dusted the office.  He wiped down the floors of the office, but he just passed away in the last ten years, five, six years. Charlie Gordon, just a nice man but part of the group, and Abe Schwartz at Schwartz Glass always came in to the, Schwartz, he had four places to go to get coffee in the morning.  He had coffee-ed out, but he came to my office, for coffee, as an additional coffee because my father had doughnuts, so, he was looking for business.  He was looking, he was a glass-man. “Anybody need glass? Anybody need panes of glass in their houses?  I’ll take, I need some work.”  There was a doctor, Harold Korn.  I did a survey on. When I first got into the insurance business, my uncle says, “I want you to take these policies,” and there were 30 of them. “Put ‘em down on a, on a spreadsheet, listing on their values on it, and what their future values on it.”  He had 30 policies, life insurance policies, anybody that needed to make a sale, they’d go to Harold Korn, “Can you buy, can you buy a little policy from me so I can have a sale?” and he would buy, he would buy a sale.  He’d make a sale for the person.

Interviewer:  Harold Korn would buy an insurance policy for his car or liability, or life insurance…

Beim:  No, $500, $500 life insurance policy, or $1000 policy.

Interviewer:  Just to give the guy some business.

Beim:  And he’d come, come collect the money each month or every, he’d make a debit run, collect the dime or whatever it cost, whatever it cost, a dollar, ‘cause you always had a dollar in your pocket.  When I started the Maccabee Lodge, you always had a five-dollar bill in your pocket. Your wife, your mother, your father, always made sure you had a dollar out of your pocket before you, when you went to the football game, you had a dollar in your pocket, because you got to go to Rubino’ afterwards and get a pizza, so you, they gave you two dollars.  I mean, a cheese pizza was seventy-five cents.  Pepperoni was ninety cents.

Interviewer:  You have a heck-of-a-lot of good memories.

Beim:  I remember too much.  Sometimes, my Grandfather Oppenheimer, would, at Temple Israel.  He says, “ I know everything that goes on.”  My grandfather was in the War, his uniform is here.  He’s in the war.  He came back.  He didn’t have any job.  He became a window cleaner for Lazarus, and then he went to work for Capital Manufacturing, and lots of Jews down at Capital Manufacturing because the Europeans came in.  They were skilled always whether Jewish, or Hungarian or Czechoslovakian or Slovakian, they came down.  They looked, Sam Melton always used to hire lots of people, and my grandfather was Captain of the Guard. He was Captain of the Guard.

Interviewer:  What do you mean by that?

Beim:  When you came in, you checked in, your time slot.  You had to pull a card, your timers when you came in.

Interviewer:  When workers would come in with their time sheet, or, they would put your card in.  You punch in.

Beim:  You punched in. If there was a problem on the floor among people, there had to be a guard there or there had to be a person there for management.  My grandfather was that person,

Interviewer:  In charge.

Beim:  In charge and his common rule was, if you pull the gun, you better pull the trigger, too.  He never pulled the gun, ‘cause he was, and he had side businesses on the side.  He’d sell an apple, he’d sell on the side…so he’d be the Captain of the Guard.  Because he was the Captain of the Guard, he was also, got to Temple Israel.  He was with Temple Israel.  He was the head usher at Temple Israel.  He was also the person in the kitchen when they had dinners.  He was the person making the dinners in the kitchen for the event.  He’d be making turkeys or whatever they did down there.  It’s probably got my, how I got some blood in me for, for the kitchen.

Interviewer:   Yes. You had role models, your father, your grandfather.

Beim:   When I was at, I was AEPi at Ohio Northern, I was in charge of the kitchen.  Here you have a Methodist school with no liquor allowed on, on campus.

Interviewer:  No what?

Beim:  No liquor.  You’re not allowed to have booze, and we have a Jewish fraternity house and we had, we’ve got to have a Friday night meal.  We’re a Jewish House. We’ve got to have a  Friday night meal. We’ve got to have wine.  I went to the Dean of Men.  “We’ve got to have wine., gotta’ have.”  He’s not going to fight me.  We had wine. We had Shabbos dinner at Ohio Northern and it was a big deal to be invited to our House for Friday night meals, as well as you may invite somebody at your House.  On that campus, we, all the Jews were invited to our House for Friday night meal.  We would have the President of the University occasionally, Dean of Men, Dean of Women, and we’d serve wine, but I was in charge of going to Beaver Dam, Ohio, which is the closest liquor store I could find that had Mogen David wine.

Interviewer:  Gary, I want to give you just a chance to give any final thoughts you want to have about your life.

Beim:  I probably can give, I want, I can probably give you more thoughts, but I’m going to do it at another time because I have a sheet and I don’t want to take your time up to go through this, but I’ll take a time for something else.

Interviewer:  We may have a Part Two. You never know.

Beim:  We may have a Part Two.

Interviewer:  Okay.

Beim:  I’m going to go through my sheet, make sure I get everything out of here on that.

Interviewer:  Gary Beim, a life of service to the community, a successful businessman, and a man who has many, many wonderful memories of Jewish life in Columbus, and this is how we build the history of the Jewish community which is the goal of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.  Mr. Beim, thank you very much.

Beim:  Thank you.  Thank you for your time.

Transcribed by Linda Kalette Schottenstein
April 20, 2026

 

Part II

Interviewer:  The date is April 7th, 2026.  This is Bill Cohen from the Columbus Jewish Historical Society and we’re doing another interview with Gary Beim. We talked with Mr. Beim a couple weeks ago and did a very in-depth interview, but he’s got even more things that he wants to talk about and he’s had such a full life, so we’re doing a Part Two interview today and Gary, you wanted to talk some about your wife.  We didn’t get a chance to talk about her much last time.  Tell us about her.  Who, what was her maiden name?  Where, how did you meet?

Beim:  She was Jack and Sadie Cooperstein’s daughter.  Her brother was Harry Cooperstein.  He played in the OSU marching Band, but Lainey was at home and when I separated from my first wife, and I went to synagogue on a Friday night after separation, they had a singles group and that Friday night with Alan Ciner, Rabbi Alan Ciner, they had, I met, I didn’t meet her, I knew, I think I knew who she was but I didn’t know who she was but she knew who I was, and after a whirlwind trip and then we went to Israel together with the chaperoning of the Agudas Achim Youth, she went along on, on that thanks to Rabbi Alan Ciner,  who stepped in in the middle of it because Jay Perler, her cousin, didn’t want her to go because we would be in Israel.  It might be, something illegal might happen, so we got engaged at The Wall on that Friday night, that first Friday night and after a whirlwind moving her into my house on Sherwood, she, we got married in October.

Interviewer:  This was what year?

Beim:  1985, ’85, 1985 for sure, and throughout our lives, these 40 years now, she’s been, she just doesn’t sit in the chair in the back.  She sits up front with me and does things with me and she should have equal time with everything that has gone on with me.

Interviewer:  What has she done in her life?  Was she a housewife or did she work outside the home?

Beim:  She worked for Lab Corporation in Dublin.  She was a, she’s a trained cytologist, which is the study of female cells for cancer.

Interviewer:  Oh, you know, now I remember.  Gary, you did talk about her because in our Part One interview you told me she was a cytologist…

Beim:  Right.

Interviewer:  …and with my bad hearing, I thought you said psychologist…

Beim:  No.

Interviewer:  …but you told me how she had a very full career as a cytologist.

Beim:  Correct.  She, she would, she’d get up in the morning, at five in order to go to work so she could  come home at 3:00 and miss all the traffic and work a full day at LabCorp up there, and she was the number, the number one person next to Gary, Dr, after Gary Barnett who also was the doctor in charge or on duty for, for study of cells, but she’s been, anything I’ve ever done in the last 40 years,  I mentioned the Policemen’s Dinner and, which, which I did for 25 years from 1925 to, no not 1925, but oh, I think, 1970 to 1995 ‘til I got sick.  She was right, she was delivering trays and putting trays together for food for police officers on Christmas Eve which was a B’nai B’rith project that was done out of love for our police officers and our community where Jews were, wanted to be noticed and protected by our fellow police officers.  We started this little project, which grew into eventually, twenty-five police officers and fifteen hundred, twenty-five locations, fifteen hundred police officers on Christmas Eve, riding with the police, riding with the police and furnishing trays.

Interviewer:  Yes, we talked a lot about that in our Part One interview.  You had salami and pastrami and turkey and rolls and…

Beim:  …cheese and pastry goods and bread and a lot of people, a lot of people helped out on that.  Mike Callif at the Callif Produce, and from the Florentine and all different kinds of people stepped, stepped up to, to, to help make it a success and the members of B’nai B’rith and Zion, eventually Zion Lodge, came and delivered on Christmas Eve all over the city in whatever kind of weather that was at and took it to the police station so they would be supported by it.

Interviewer:  While we are talking a little bit about your wife, can you, do you have any memories of Jewish holidays, celebrations with your wife or your family?  Anything that stands out?

Beim:  Well, we always, we celebrated all the holidays, Passover with seders and we, Hanukkah getting together and with cheer, and, of course, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and we used to have large get-togethers for…Jiminy Christmas…Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and get together and Lainey planned it and did it.  She was, Yetta Minkin was her cousin with Norma Wells and that was part of the Sylvia Schecter Crew.  When I say “crew” because when the Crew got together to do Sisterhood luncheons, and things at Agudas Achim, she was part of that one and she helped out with the Minyaner Program and Boys Night Out, eventually.  She was also there, and that was a massive endeavor, a massive thing to do.  Kenny Garver was, originally did Boys Night Out and he got sick and somehow or another, I got an itch and said, “I can do this,” and so I put together individuals of the Brotherhood, and we went in and we made for 25, at least with my term, 25 years’ worth of Brotherhood and we weren’t paid.  We were volunteers and we had a wonderful time doing it over two or three days preparing that meal, and…

Interviewer:  That’s where you had Jewish comedians come in and a big dinner and fundraising.  Yeah, we talked about, we talked about, a lot about that when we interviewed you before.  Let me ask you this.  Do you have children?

Beim:  I have Larry and Andrew Beim.  Larry’s 59 and Andy is 55 and Andy has given me, blessed me with two grandchildren, Danielle and Alexandra, and they’re fine, fine ladies.  Fine ladies.  One’s got a, works for Revolution Mortgage and the other one works for Pike Engineering.

Interviewer:  Now, you’re talking about your two granddaughters.

Beim:  My granddaughters.

Interviewer:  Now what about your two sons?  What, what did they do?

Beim:  Andrew’s been in the car business.  He’s been with Lev’s.  He’s been with…

Interviewer:  With Loved?

Beim:  Lev.

Interviewer:  Lev.

Beim:  Pawn Shop.

Interviewer:  Oh, Lev’s Pawn Shop. Okay. Yes.

Beim:  He was with, managing several stores and decided to move a little bit to, to more with cars and selling off, off-line merchandise and making a living doing that, but…

Interviewer:  And your other son?

Beim:  He’s moved to California at, not that he, he loved the Grateful Dead and he loved doing writing and doing creative things and he just, was on his own, and he moved out there and he worked for a Beverly Hills Hotel out there for a little bit, and he’s out there doing something.

Interviewer:  I hear you.  He’s adventurous.

Beim:  Adventurous, yes.

Interviewer:   You know, one thing we sometimes ask people in these interviews, is, what are their memories of some of the most, the most important and sometimes serious parts of American history, just for example, the John F. Kennedy Assassination, November 1963?

Beim:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  Do you happen to remember maybe where you were when you heard about that or what happened?

Beim:  I happened to be at Broad and the freeway and heard that, heard about that.  Thanksgiving break about that time, and like everybody else, I was, I was shocked by it, but the bombing of the World Trade Centers, I was at Robert Chaykin’s office, chiropractor and waiting to see him and saw it on his TV, and I was, like, stunned by it, but, those are just things that occurred.  You know, with the Broth…Boys, not Boys Night Out, but the Policemen’s Dinner, it was funny on that.  B’nai B’rith raised money for that project.  A couple people gave us a couple hundred dollars each along the line, and we sold grapefruit.  That was the time we sold some, I got some crazy idea of selling grapefruit and we ordered 300 cases of grapefruit out of Texas to be brought to Columbus, Ohio and it was supposed to be brought in before Thanksgiving. It didn’t get there ‘til after Thanksgiving, and which is ironic about that is, because we made, those 300 cases gave us about $1500 dollars of money which paid for Policemen’s Dinner and the truck pulls, I got a call from the, the truckdriver, “I’m here. Where are you?”  and I said, “Where are you?” and he says, “Well, I’m at 140 South Gould.” And I said, “I live at 141 North Gould,” and it just so happened Bob Goldenberg’s had a shiva, was at shiva, at that time with a truck, with a semi, tractor trailer in front of the house and the driver came up to the house and said, “I got grapefruit for you,” and they, it was…

Interviewer:  What a story.

Beim:  Now, the truck was before Thanksgiving.  I had a crew ready to unload the grapefruit to come to my house, the day before, Wednesday, Tuesday. Now that it was after Thanksgiving, I had no crew, so the truckdriver comes back, over to, to North Gould where we lived and pulls up, says, “ How’re we going to do this?” I says, “Can you back your truck into my driveway, back to the garage?”  He says, “I can do anything you want me to but I’m going to ruin your driveway.  You’re better off unloading it onto the car and driving it back to back of the driveway and putting it into your garage.”

Interviewer:  He says, you’re better off unloading the grapefruits from the truck to your car and then taking…”

Beim:  It was my ex-wife’s Marsha Goldstein’s car which I think it was a convertible.  I’m not sure.  I’m not sure what kind of car it was, but we had to load the car with 25 cases at a time and take it to the back and put it in the garage in the back and the worst part about it was, temperature. It was snowing on top of it.  Just when the truck came it was snowing, so we had to unload the truck on the  street, put it in the car, drive it to the back, put it in the garage.  Took the car out of the garage, of course, and then to make matters worse, because it was going down to twenty degrees, we had space heaters, so I strung several extension cords from the house to the garage…

Interviewer:  …so that the grapefruits would not freeze.

Beim:  …so that the grapefruits would not freeze.  I didn’t know anything about shortages or electrical or anything like that being shorted out or something going wrong but we had the grapefruit packed up in the garage, 300 cases of grapefruit and I didn’t understand that the 300 cases only represented one fourth of the truck and I thought I was getting a full truck.  Thank goodness I didn’t get a full truck.

Interviewer:  Did you do all this loading and unloading, just you and the truck driver or did you finally get a crew?

Beim:  I had nobody.  Gil Feiertag I think lived next door.

Interviewer:  Who was that?

Beim:  Gil Feiertag who was married to Judy Danchik, Dr. Danchik, Saul Danchik’s daughter.

Interviewer:  He helped?

Beim:  I think he came over and helped, helped out loading and unloading the grapefruit and then because, because the crew was gone, and we were trying to get rid of the grapefruit now. For the week afterward, we’d get up in the morning, load the car up with grapefruit to deliver it to people, to B’nai B’rith members who had sold grapefruit and it was their turn to deliver it except for the one load that had to go down to Cincinnati, Ohio, because Dave Kotstan, Chuck May, Feldman, Elliott Feldman had a pharmacy down in Cincinnati and he had bought 50 cases of grapefruit and I had to deliver them down at Cincinnati so I loaded the car up again, in order to take it down to Cincinnati, and the weather was not good and that bridge over the Miami River still scares me to this day.

Interviewer:  Now this story, go and tell us a little more about the first part where the truckdriver brings a semi-truck full of grapefruit, mistakenly he brings it to a shiva.

Beim:  Bob Goldenberg, not Bob Goldenberg, Doc Goldman lived on, still, 140 South Gould.

Interviewer:  Dr. Goldman, and his family was having a shiva and the truckdriver goes up and knocks on the door…

Beim:  …on the door and says “Where do you want the grapefruit?”  and he brings him in and says,“ I don’t know.  Who’re you supposed to deliver it to?”  “Beim.”  He knew who Beim was and he calls me up and says, “The truckdriver’s here.  What’ll I do with him?” “Send him to my side of the street!”

Interviewer:  This sounds like it could be a script for a Mel Brooks movie.

Beim:  I, all I can tell you is that, I had a great, great laugh with this.  It was a great laugh and experience for that but this was only one great idea with B’nai B’rith, but the next year, the next year or the year after that, I had an idea.  I had an idea of let’s build the world’s largest submarine sandwich with B’nai B’rith so we, I said, “Okay.  I’ll, let’s fly this by…” I went to the Eastland Mall and I said to, I saw Jack Worley, who was, also later on became a columnist for the Citizen Journal.  I said, “I want to build the largest sub sandwich from Lazarus to Sears and back again.”  He says, “That’s a great idea. Think you can get a radio station to do it?”  “Sure. I’ll go up to WTVN.  They’ll, they’re crazy.” and they bought and advertised it and the crew from B’nai B’rith who did the Policemen’s Dinner and all that got together and we built the largest submarine sandwich from one side to the other.  We were selling it.  We were going to sell it, but because we got delayed, we had so much food left over, we sent it, we gave it to charities throughout Columbus. We took it and delivered it and then the next year after that, another crazy idea was the Rubik’s Cube.  We had a Rubik’s Cube contest in the mall and who could do the cube the fastest.

Interviewer:  Which mall was this in?

Beim:  Eastland.

Interviewer:  Eastland Mall.

Beim:  They were dumb enough to try me once, they might want to try me again and we did that through WTVN also.

Interviewer:  The contest was to see who could solve a Rubik’s Cube the fastest.

Beim:  Right, and we had contests on it.

Interviewer:  And this was the fundraiser for…

Beim:  This was just a, just a…

Interviewer:  Just a fun thing.

Beim:  …a fun thing.  The crazy, the B’nai B’rith Lodge, Maccabee Lodge did some, a lot of, crazy things.  To our credit, the weirdest, the most unusual was something we always liked to do.  We went to Children’s Hospital.  Dave Goldstein had Costume Specialists, downtown, manufacturing for making costumes and scenery.  He says, he said, he says,  “Let’s go to Children’s Hospital.”  We all got dressed, 20 of us got dressed up in different clown costumes and we went up on Halloween to Children’s Hospital to give kids a Halloween treats and it was just, just off-the-wall things.  Eventually, they had to stop it because one psychologist said, says, “You’re good for some of the kids but the costumes are scaring some of the other kids,” and it was, it was just a great thing to do.

Interviewer:  This was the Maccabee Lodge.

Beim:  Maccabee Lodge.

Interviewer:  I think you told us in Part One of our interview that you started that Lodge, you and some others started that Lodge, because there was another Lodge…

Beim:  Zion Lodge 62.

Interviewer:  …Zion, and they were older guys and you kind of viewed them as a little old-fashioned and you wanted to start a younger version, and it sounds like with your crazy but good ideas for fun and for fundraising, it sounds like you really did build that into a great Lodge.

Beim:  We got encouraged by A.C. Strip. Sandy Levy was their first president.  Alan Rosen was involved in that and a guy named Cliff Crowell was also involved in that.  Some of these people have moved out of, moved away shortly thereafter.  Elliott Levy was another name in that.  There were about…Robert, Bobby Derrow was, I think, also in there also, but we met every month at Woodview Plaza Party house and had a steak dinner and we’d haul food up the hill and cook steaks and just had a great time together, once a month.  It was a good time.

Interviewer:  I know since our last interview, you wrote down some notes of things that perhaps you didn’t get to talk about in part One. Do you see anything on your list that…

Beim:  Well, my sister, I had sisters Judy and Nancy, but my sister Judy was the first female in the Fraternal Order of Police Associates. She went through being a secretary which was a great honor.  She was also the first female Charity Newsie and she was on the corners collecting money…

Interviewer:  …selling the newspaper.

Beim:  …selling the newspaper.   Something also our family was involved with was the Columbus Checkers and…

Interviewer:  That was a minor league hockey.

Beim:  …in the International League Hockey.

Interviewer:  Tell us about that. About what year, approximately.

Beim:  It had to be about Nineteen…I want to say 70s, the Checkers.  The Schmelzer Brothers, Brothers, came down from Cleveland.  They had a franchise to buy for Columbus, and they had all kinds of difficulties and problems with it and my father bought shares in it and sat on the Board on it because they would need someone from Columbus, Ohio, to do it and they were located at 88 East Broad Street.  I think Feibel gave them the room for it and…

Interviewer:  Now, these brothers you talked about.  Pronounce their name again.

Beim:  Schmelzer, Jerry Schmelzer, Larry Schmelzer…

Interviewer:  Do you know how that is spelled?

Beim:  S-c-h-m-e-l-z-e-r.

Interviewer:  So, your father, again, was that Morris?

Beim:  No.  That was my father Albert.

Interviewer:  Albert.  So, Albert bought shares in the Columbus Checkers.  Do you know how many, I mean, what part of…?

Beim:  I can’t tell you.  I know, I think, I bought a hundred shares…

Interviewer:  Oh.  Okay.

Beim:  …and sat on it.  The interesting story was, the Fairgrounds, the Fairgrounds is an unusual place to have anything.  It’s the only thing at the time that had anything going on that was going on in the city.  They had the Arts Festival there.  They had Winterfest there. They had the Horse Show there. They had the Auto Show there.  Everything was there and a lot of times they used the… the Boys Basketball Tournaments were there.

Interviewer:  The Coliseum.

Beim:  The Coliseum.

Interviewer:  Fairgrounds Coliseum.

Beim:  …and the Quarter Horse Show and, was there and you had to work the hockey arena around the shows which means your schedule was awfully, was hard and the fact that they had their ticket office away from the stadium, no place at the office, no one could get to it, so one of the Schmelzers, I think, Jerry or, one of them got married and everybody went to the wedding, and my father said, planned ahead of time, he says, “We don’t belong at 88 East Broad Street.”  He says, “We’re moving,” and before that time, they made him President of the Checkers.

Interviewer:  This is your…

Beim:  My father.

Interviewer:  Your father was President of the Checkers?

Beim:  …of the Checkers.  He says, he says, “This is crazy,” that “we’re moving out of this building.”  He went out.  He bought two trailers, erected two trailers, put them outside the Seventh Avenue gate at the Fairgrounds, with the Fairgrounds permission, because in order to get in the Fairgrounds, you had to pay an admission. It’s something, the exposition, he gained money off of it and we sold the, moved the Checkers office, he moved the Checkers office to the Seventeenth Avenue and when the Schmelzer got back from his elopement, not his elopement, but honeymoon, he came back.  He went down to 88 East Broad Street to go to his office and it was closed up and he called my father and said, “Where’s the office?”  He says, “I forgot to tell you. We moved it.  It’s now at the Fairgrounds and you can have, you have a little desk there now.”

 Interviewer:  In a trailer.

 Beim:  In a trailer.  He says, “If you don’t like it you can move us back.”

Interviewer:  That’s a great story, and the Columbus Checkers, of course, evolved.  There were other Minor League teams that came in, of course…

 Beim:  The Seals.

 Interviewer:  The Seals.

Beim:  …may have been first.

Interviewer:  The Chill.

Beim:  The Chill was there and then eventually the Blue Jackets.

Interviewer:  And now we have Major League Hockey.

Beim:  Right.

Interviewer:  …and you and your father and other supporters of, of the Checkers, you showed that there were, you proved that there was some fans that would come to a hockey game.

Beim:  It might be a failure but we’ve had, because…

Interviewer:  You laid the groundwork.

Beim: …getting in, getting into the Coliseum you had to go through a toll booth and then, then they had the parking lots.  Some were paved.  Some were not paved.  Some were lit.  Some were not lit and then you had to go to this dusty Coliseum that seated, I think, I think, 5000 people if, maybe, and it was set up for a basketball arena and they had to bring in ice and an ice machine and a Zamboni in order to clean the ice and they had to rebuild the locker rooms because they were just like stalls and then they had to find rooms for these players coming in and these were, the International Hockey League was the last step until retirement.  You’re a hockey player.  You may have made it from the elementary to the juniors and then you wanted to move your way up to the NHL, you had to make a stop maybe at the International Hockey League or the American Hockey League but if you were coming back down, the IHL was there and they had a bunch of ruffians and the idea was there was more of a, of a brawl-type-league.  I’m thinking of the movie Slapshot and, of that nature to compare it to.

Interviewer:  Fistfights were, were required almost.

Beim:  No question about it. The seats were, the seats were dirty.  They needed the ushers to clean the seats to make sure each time ‘cause there was enough dust from, between the horse shows and other shows that were going on. To this day I think the Quarter-Horse Show, the Quarter-Horse show is for two weeks, two and a half weeks, and then they have the…

Interviewer:  It’s still there at the Fairgrounds.

Beim:  It’s still at the Fairgrounds now and it expands over to the barn and they show the horses and somewhere along the line, somebody, it’s still there.  All these people from Texas, they got no place else to go but Columbus, Ohio, for their horse show, which is great for the city.  It’s great for the city.  All those trailer parks are all over there.

Interviewer:  But you’re telling us that the Beim family was an integral part of, of professional sports here in Columbus…

 Beim:  Well…I…

Interviewer:  Minor league but important.

Beim:  Minor league. At the Charity Newsie auction, when the Clippers came back, came back to Columbus…

Interviewer:  The baseball team.

Beim:  The baseball team, one of the items auctioned off was two season tickets to the, to the Clippers baseball game, and I don’t know why but I bought the two tickets, giving a donation to Charity Newsies, so, therefore, I had two tickets to the baseball game and then when I went to pick up the two tickets, I bought two more tickets, and my parents loved going to the baseball game.  We, I loved to go to the baseball games every day.  The kids enjoyed it.  We were down third baseline.  Bob Gundersheimer was down there, from the Union by way of Moorehouse Fashion.  He was an accountant, a fine gentleman but a little off the base sometimes, but he used to park in the lot by the, roll into the parking lot, roll into the back gate, roll into the seats and sat there for five or six, seven, innings and then go home.  It was great entertainment and at that time it was funny because when they remodeled the stadium, I went up to the lounge upstairs.  I got to meet, Mattingly whose…

Interviewer:  Don Mattingly.

Beim:  Don Mattingly’s wife and [Mike] Pagliarulo’s wife and their kids, and, as a matter of fact, I got Mattingly’s wife a job at the Bridal Shop on Hamilton Road with Randy Gold.

Interviewer:  Mattingly went on to good career with the New York Yankees.

Beim:  Yankees and then the manager of the, of the Dodgers, and bench coach for Toronto and I don’t know where he is now.  He’s 65 years old and he’s a bench coach, I think for, still with Toronto, I think.

Interviewer:  This was at the old Jet Stadium out on West Mound Street, later called Cooper.

Beim:  Jet Stadium, Cooper Stadium, but I’m just looking at notes, and it’s just who’s that? I can’t even read that. Oh, I actually mentioned my cousin, Grundstein, Lynn and Barbara Grundstein.

Interviewer:  Tell us about them.

Beim:  Lynn is married to Dr. Mark Groban, a psychiatrist in, was a psychiatrist in Washington, D.C, and he became an intricate part of a company called Mamsi, M-a-m-s-i, in doing health care, and he and another guy who, he lived at the company, he eventually sold the company to United Health Care.  I kept on asking him, “Should I buy it?”  He says, “Every time they give me stock, I sell.”   He says, “I don’t know when it’s going to go under., ”  so…

Interviewer:  It became very successful, no?

Beim:  They sold it. They went, it went from six dollars a share down to three dollars a share and then to 24 dollars a share, and I used to call him up, says “How’s things going?” “We’re doing great today but I’d sell anyway,” and, my cousin Barbara, she married, she’s a designer, she’s a real estate, in Keller Winslow, and she married Charles Schaefer.  Charles Schaefer was an underwriter for Archer Meeks and Weiler doing big, big accounts, and his sister was Laura Lee Schaefer, Miss America, so, bingle, bangle bungle.

Interviewer:  You have had such a full life and you have been active not just in the Jewish community but in the overall general community. You know so many people. You have so many stories.

Beim:  I’ve enjoyed every bit of it, and I became president of the Charity Newsies. I ran seven times to become president. Seven times.  Normally you stop after one or two.  They, I kept on. I can do this, and they finally allowed me to do that. One of the nice things I always remember is, we had a breakfast, trying to raise money and we invited lots of corporates to go down to Wendy’s, down at Fifth and Broad Street.

Interviewer:  The original Wendy’s.

Beim:  The original Wendy’s and a lot of bigwigs. They made a lot of great presentations and at the end of the event, I’m sitting there.  I’m tired, exhausted. I, at that time, I was only on the board.  I wasn’t president at the time and I’m sitting at the table with Dave Thomas and Bob Evans sits down with us, and we’re, they’re talking restaurant business and I’m sitting there soaking it up and I was just saying to myself, I remember Dave Thomas says, “I’ve tried breakfast, inside, outside, I can’t make it go, but you charge more for breakfast than I could ever do.”

Interviewer:  He’s telling this to Bob Evans.

Beim:  Bob Evans. “How do you make it go?” and Bob Evans says, “Quality. Quality and my help is on the spot helping the customer.  We’re involved with every person that sits down at the table.  We want to make sure that they get the finest meal possible.  All the way through the restaurant, he says, “You can give it away and people will not come, but you have to be, the quality of the people within the organization,” and it was nice.  It was nice. Dave Thomas was involved with all the charities, involved with youth and orphanages in Columbus and he used to give, he always used to buy the first paper, $25,256 because there are 256 ways to make a hamburger.

Interviewer:  …to make a Wendy’s hamburger.  Yes.  So, he would bid a high amount of money for one of your Charity Newsies newspapers…

Beim:  …and add two-hundred fifty-six. Here’s a great story.  I was sitting once at the Berwick Party House having lunch before the news drive and I’m just in my own world and Naught comes up to me from [Shoe Naught?].

Interviewer:  I don’t know who this is. Explain.

Beim:  Steve Naught was part of the shoe business at Schottenstein’s.

Interviewer:  Okay, and his name again was…

Beim:  Steve or, I think it was Steve Naught.

Interviewer:  Naught.  Is that like…

Beim:  N-a-u-g-h-t.  Comes up to me. “I want to be involved with the Charity Newsies.”  He says, “ It’s a great organization. I’m with the Schottensteins there says, “I want to give you $100 for every one of my employees.”  I nearly fell off the chair.  I says, “How many employees do you have?”  “I got 75,” which means, I got $7500 sitting there at Berwick Party House, and the best part about after that, ‘cause the shoe business for that we’re, for the Newsies give-away, the Charity Newsies gave away shoes at that time, and we had trouble with our shoe supplier which was Pick Shoes or Gilbert Shoes, ‘cause they were, they couldn’t handle the volume, and the accountability for, accounting for the shoes and the money we’re spending on it and I finally said, I was in, at one of the meetings, I says, “I have an outlet for your shoes. We’ll do Schottenstein’s. They’ll do it. I know they’ll do it,” so we gave away shoe vouchers through Schottenstein’s to give a pair of shoes. Come. We had certain section of shoes. They could come in with a voucher and they would get a pair of shoes from, from Schottenstein’s.  We would pay the bill for them to Schottenstein’s because Naught was involved with that, got involved with that.

Interviewer:  It always sounds like you, you’re the right guy at the right place at the right time and you know how to, you’ve known in your life how to schmooze with people, and I mean that in the positive sense of the term. You’re gregarious and you have rubbed shoulders with business leaders, political leaders, sports people, and it, it makes for good, good feelings and good things happen as a result.

Beim:  Absolutely. I feel, I feel good about my life.  I feel good that being a part, being a part of the community.  As someone says, there’s always gotta’ be someone who’s, when you’re digging a hole, someone’s gotta’ be in there with you, to dig a hole right. I want to be digging a hole.  I want to be in that hole. I’m not supervising the hole, so I try to be, the Charity Newsies used to have, like, $700 active involved members, and B’nai B’rith active involved members with Children’s Home Day. At Children’s Home Day, I can’t tell you how many kids, had 5000 kids come in from all over the state and Wendy’s picked up the check, picked up the tab for the meals, so you sit there, you sit there at the entrance of it or you go down to the food and you help distribute food to these kids and you go to give them ride tickets so they can go on rides and you go into the arts buildings and they’re, you’re, you’re their buddy, so…

Interviewer:   You have done grunt work, but you have also done the organizing work that makes all these charitable events happen.

Beim:  Well, correct, but I’ve also had a lot of good people coming with me.  Steve Shkolnik with Boys Night Out, Gary Beckman, Mark Lichtenstein, Shelly Sinai, all, all part of a crew.  Sometimes, when, when I call them, they say, “What are you getting involved with me now? What are you doing now?”

Interviewer:  “What are you getting me involved with now,” they’re saying.

Beim:  “Ah, don’t worry.  Don’t worry about it  You just show up.  It’ll be, it’ll be just fine.”

Interviewer:  With those words, let’s end our interview with Gary Beim.

Beim:  I appreciate it.  I appreciate all your efforts and guiding me.

Interviewer:  Thank you, Gary Beim.  The date is April 7^th,  2026.  I’m Bill Cohen, and this oral history interview is for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.

 

Transcribed by Linda Kalette Schottenstein